In a true on-demand world, consumers would have the ultimate power to decide what products and services they purchase. Media would not be exempt. At least, that’s the belief of this Chaser — which explains why we were interested in Monday’s The New York Times article about fuss in cable channel pricing. Here’s the gist of the issue:
The issue of à la carte pricing is a headache that the cable companies and networks have long tried to avoid. But now, cable pricing is coming under new scrutiny in Washington in a debate driven by Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and greatly inflamed by the indecency debate and lobbyists like Mr. Bozell.Yeah, that sounds cool if you are a television viewer — but how does it relate to the rest of the news media landscape? Once consumers get a taste for selecting only the content they want in one medium, the pressure will be on to offer the same feature in others. It’s one scary step closer to the Daily Me. Why “scary”? This Chaser still loves editors to help him understand what’s going on in the world.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of members of the House Commerce Committee, led by its chairman Joe L. Barton, Republican from Texas, and Nathan Deal, Republican from Georgia, asked the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Michael K. Powell, to review the feasibility of à la carte pricing and to provide its findings to the House committee by mid-November.
Besides, if we only pick the channels we think we want, we’ll miss opportunities to stumble into shows like “Unwrapped” on the Food Channel.